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Post by brigham on Mar 13, 2019 8:55:32 GMT
I'm familiar with this film, but every time I watch it I see something new. It had never occurred to me that the station signs were put up for the benefit of the film; yet now it's pointed-out, it's totally obvious. If you had to have it pointed out to you it can in no way be 'obvious'. Far less 'totally obvious'.  A dismissal of the value of education. I didn't know the Earth was a globe, until It was explained to me. Now it's totally obvious. |
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class411
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Post by class411 on Mar 13, 2019 10:25:20 GMT
If you had to have it pointed out to you it can in no way be 'obvious'. Far less 'totally obvious'. A dismissal of the value of education. I didn't know the Earth was a globe, until It was explained to me. Now it's totally obvious. You are confusing 'Obvious', with 'Obviously true once you've had it explained to you'. It is not at all obvious to people who have never had it explained to them that the earth is a sphere. Quite the contrary. Once it is explained it is obvious that it is true. Obviously in the days before digital technology - hanging out some banners was probably the easiest way to clearly identify the various stations as the camera crew passed through. Nowadays it is easy to add captions with post production software but in 1910 what we see was probably cutting edge! Hasn't anyone here ever seen a silent film? The 'technology' for adding captions to film was an early development and was cheap and effective. The cameraman would have had an evenly lit space with a card holder at which he could point his camera. He would then set the camera up and running whilst he or an assistant changed the cards as required. The film would then be developed, cut up, and spliced into wherever it was needed. It was simple, cheap, and produced bright, clear, and perfectly focused results. Unlike the virtually unreadable signs that flashed into focus for a fraction of a second in the film in this thread. The only reason why anyone with any sense is leaning towards thinking the signs were placed there for the film is that we can't think of any other reason why they would be there. But then it is hard to second guess the reasons people operating over a century ago might have had. If it was deliberate, it was am utter failure, as far as providing the audience with information even a quarter as good as could have been provided with the well tried and tested extant technology. |
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Post by whistlekiller2000 on Mar 13, 2019 11:06:49 GMT
brigham , you recently took it upon yourself to castigate others for derailing threads. From the above it seems you're exempt from your own edict doesn't it?.  I know the occasional bit of pedantry is to be expected on here but please...…..pot, kettle, black...…... 
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Post by brigham on Mar 13, 2019 15:12:21 GMT
I'm familiar with this film, but every time I watch it I see something new. It had never occurred to me that the station signs were put up for the benefit of the film; yet now it's pointed-out, it's totally obvious. If you had to have it pointed out to you it can in no way be 'obvious'. Far less 'totally obvious'. THERE'S the derailment. Not Guilty, M'lud. |
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Post by whistlekiller2000 on Mar 13, 2019 15:15:50 GMT
If you had to have it pointed out to you it can in no way be 'obvious'. Far less 'totally obvious'. THERE'S the derailment. Not Guilty, M'lud. |
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Post by grahamhewett on Mar 13, 2019 17:50:00 GMT
That video looked very familiar. Indeed a search on YouTube finds some very similar videos uploaded some as far back as 10 years ago. Indeed more recently I enjoyed seeing a speeded up version of the whole trip in 2 minutes which was uploaded by Tim Dunn (Londonist)last year. It looks like all these videos recycle BFI archive material. It would be interesting to know who or perhaps (why) that footage was created - I suspect it must have had explicit support by the Metropolitan Railway given the presence of temporary banners hung from bridges on the approach to the various stations and what appears to be a special non-stop train and possibly the use of a dedicated filming platform mounted on a truck directly in front of the loco - as there is no sign of the loco despite some wide side to side pans. Obviously in the days before digital technology - hanging out some banners was probably the easiest way to clearly identify the various stations as the camera crew passed through. Nowadays it is easy to add captions with post production software but in 1910 what we see was probably cutting edge! These films have overtones of the "MetroLand" advertising project whereby the Met owners were attempting to generate additional traffic and worked in collaboration with developers to build new MetroLand estates and stations which saw the suburbs extended out towards Buckinghamshire. Sadly I doubt much of the Metropolitan railway archive material survived the transition into British Rail days let alone subsequent iterations which brought us to the route we see today. It certainly wouldn't have come BR's way. LT presumably. One of my more recondite jobs as the BR Company Secretary in the Board's closing years was to manage their archive - almost exclusively paper - which lived in a six floor fire hazard just off the end of Royal Oak (and the disused loco shed at S Croydon). No films there. (The LFCDA's comments on 150 years of combustible paper were bad enough; God knows what they would have said about adding celluloid to the mix...) |
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Post by nickf on Mar 13, 2019 18:15:22 GMT
Heavens yes! Nitrate film stock was highly inflammable. When I started out at BBC Alexandra Palace in the '60s they had a projector there specially fitted out for nitrate stock - absolutely festooned with fire extinguishers.
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Post by grahamhewett on Mar 15, 2019 11:01:45 GMT
It would be relevant to know what happened to all those BTC publicity films of the '50s - the ones with the Bob Danvers--Walker style commentaries - presumably they all went off to the BFI. (in the closing days of BRB, we discovered that the the Eastern Region civils had employed a team of professional phtotgraphers whose main task was to photograph bridges - the Chairman's comments when this was reported were unprintable as we then had to set up a separate subsidiary and flog it to the management. They took any archived material with them as part of the deal but I don't recall any films amongst that.
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Post by silenthunter on Mar 15, 2019 11:09:15 GMT
A lot of them are on the BFI website, I believe.
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Post by John Tuthill on Mar 15, 2019 13:16:26 GMT
A lot of them are on the BFI website, I believe. It's also on the LT MUseum web site, with 46 other classic films, well worth looking at. |
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Post by spsmiler on Mar 16, 2019 0:05:36 GMT
Just watched some of the 1910 film ... yikes, unfenced railway - even the electrified line!
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Post by brigham on Mar 16, 2019 8:39:33 GMT
I hadn't noticed that. Railways have been required to be fenced since very early days.
I wonder how it came about?
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Post by tubeprune on May 22, 2019 6:47:19 GMT
If you look at first part of the film, you can see that the signals were upper quadrant semaphores as far as Willesden Green and lower quadrant beyond. The upper quadrant signals have electric trainstops whereas the lower quadrant ones don't. So they had fully track circuited automatic signals as far a Willesden Green and lock and block beyond. The automatic signalling was completed in January 1911. The section to Wembley Park went automatic when they put in the two additional tracks in 1914. This would date the film to 1911 to 1912, since the widening works are not visible.
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I know the occasional bit of pedantry is to be expected on here but please...…..pot, kettle, black...…... 
